Thursday, 20 November 2014

Alas, man-flu sufferers in the City of Perth! Last weekend, if you desperately needed to
wipe your nose but your hanky was in the wash, your only options were shirt
sleeves, scrunched-up chunks of toilet roll or the nearest small dog. There
wasn’t a single box of tissues left on any shelf within five miles of Perth Concert
Hall, as the SNP conference collectively welled up to mark Alex Salmond’s transition
from inspirational leader to freelance troublemaker.

The reverberations of this momentous event spread far and
wide. Deep in the bowels of New
Broadcasting House a chill wind rattled the bars of Kirsty Wark’s cage and
garlanded Nick Robinson’s peely-wally heart with icicles. In a fashionably
postcoded Edinburgh attic Alan Cochrane, the Telegraph’s Scottish Editor, muttered darkly as he began the task
of converting his 57,263 Salmond voodoo dolls into mini-Sturgeons, complete
with wee tartan shoes. And, with his
Inverness constituency programmed into the Sat-Nav of Salmond’s 2015 electoral
bandwagon, Danny Alexander glanced nervously at his CV, wondering how the
career highlight “wretched lickspittle of Osborne and his nest of vipers” might
fare in the local job market.

To those of us who woke on 19 September to a breakfast of
sawdust and ashes, the transformation of the last two months is surely a
modern-day miracle. Salmond hasn’t simply treated defeat as an impostor; he’s
shoved a custard pie in its face, pulled its trousers down and invited us all
to laugh at its microscopic willy.

His legacy? A humungous upsurge in political engagement in
Scotland, in clear contravention of our masters’ advice that it’s dangerous and
best left to the experts. Meeting organisers previously unsure if they’d draw a
crowd big enough to justify buying a packet of Hob-Nobs are now wondering how
many folk they can cram in without Health and Safety getting antsy. All the pro-indy parties are bursting at the
seams, and the SNP conference was so over-subscribed that they’ve had to
organise a 12,000-seat reprise at the Hydro. I bet the Nawbag Chorus, with its
constant refrain “Back in your box, Yessers”, wasn’t expecting us to need a box
that large!

It’s also principally thanks to Alex Salmond that
independence, previously unmentionable at parties unless you wanted to end up
talking to the hatstand, is now part of mainstream political discourse. The other 200 or so countries on Planet Earth
may not fully appreciate this achievement, since they’ve never had a problem
taking themselves seriously. But, for a nation whose government from 1999 to
2007 couldn’t even be bothered to call itself a government, it’s a massive uplift
in self-confidence. And, even better, it
totally gets on Alistair Carmichael’s tits.

In these first nano-seconds of the early days of a better
nation, we’re finally shrugging off the Scottish cringe that’s intruded on our
political thinking like a Dalek gatecrashing a poetry festival. For broadcasters
in London complacently pre-scripting the democratic process, or pyromaniacs in
East Sussex metaphorically engulfing it in flames, this is a huge culture shock.
Is there a danger, as even some rock-solid Yes commentators have warned, of us occasionally
wandering too far along the assertiveness/chippiness spectrum? Perhaps, but
that’s an unavoidable part of discovering a voice. And, frankly, zero tolerance
for business-as-usual bullshit is exactly what we need right now.

So, for the avoidance of doubt, we’ll not stand for INEOS fracking
seven shades of shale out of our back gardens while we strain our drinking
water through a pair of tights. To hell with West Central Scotland being put at
risk of vaporisation just to ensure UK ministers’ bum-cheeks grace a UN
Security Council seat. And a wee message for the First Sea Lord: stick to being a Gilbert and Sullivan
character and stop bumping yer gums about handing shipyard jobs to France.

Our self-belief would never have flowered in this exciting,
potentially earth-shattering fashion were it not for Alex Salmond. If, back in 2007, he’d been run over by a bus
driver under the hypnotic

control of Margaret Curran, the face of present-day Scotland
would be very, very different.

The Labour ‘B’ team would still be in office at Holyrood, ineffectually
managing decline with mournful expressions and a #supinesocialism hashtag,
while the country’s brightest young talents headed off to London in search of jobs
to pay off their £27,000 student debt. Glasgow would have abandoned its 2014
Commonwealth Games bid on the grounds that it was awfy expensive and we’d just
muck it up anyway. Meanwhile, crowds would be spontaneously gathering at
Pacific Quay to congratulate BBC Scotland on its BAFTA-winning documentary
series God, What A Depressing Place, And
It’s All We Deserve.

Of course, for the cadaverous UK establishment whose
lifeblood is the status quo, this represents a dream scenario that Salmond has
irritatingly thwarted. That’s why, bereft of arguments but making full use of
the media’s relentless megaphone, they launch ad hominem attacks, vilifying him for being divisive, egocentric,
selfish and bullying and writing off the thrilling campaign that set 1.6
million aflame as “Alex Salmond’s Vanity Project”.

Divisive? Well, I was busy cheering for Judy Murray on Strictly, so I must have missed the riots.
But I’ll suspend judgment until I get through Christmas dinner without my
family using the carving equipment to hack out my black separatist heart and
impale it on a broom handle.

Egocentric? You mean they’ve invented a politician who isn’t?
Anyway, since I'm convinced that I inhabit the centre of my own personal universe, and that my
farts have the sweetest aroma of any I’ve encountered, I’d be a hypocrite to
blame Salmond for that.

Selfish? It’ll be fun watching the nay-sayers try to push
that one after he donated his First Minister’s pension to charity. Ah, but isn’t
absolute altruism impossible? He
probably just did it for the warm glow of satisfaction. Now, if he’d done proper ex-leader stuff, such as racking
up a tidy property portfolio, masquerading as Middle East Peace Envoy and inexplicably
avoiding arrest for war crimes, everyone could surely respect that.

Bullying? I certainly wouldn’t want to be a butterfingers
intern on his payroll, because I daresay a full-on tirade from him would shred several layers of skin. Still, his staff appear to be pretty loyal to him, which
suggests that either his cuddly moments outweigh his fearsome ones or he’s a
whiz at selecting masochists.

The truth is that Salmond could discover the cure for all
known diseases and still be lambasted for hogging all the glory and creating a
pensions bombshell. To the Labour Party in particular, he’s a usurper who robbed
them of the Scottish people’s votes against rhyme, reason and the clear
instructions of the Eleventh Commandment. Obviously the electorate let Labour
down too, but, as they have the excuse of being bamboozled by Salmond’s roguish
charm, they’ll be forgiven as long as they behave themselves in future.

Me? I don’t know Alex Salmond personally, although, as his
unauthorised biographer David Torrance has demonstrated, that’s no barrier to pontificating emptily about him. If pressed, I’d
say he seems to have some interesting flaws, in common with roughly 7 billion
human beings, and some phenomenal good points, in common with a great deal
fewer. And, even if I’d never seen him in my life, one look at most of his
enemies would suggest to me he’s one of the good guys.

He’s given 1.6 million of us the roller-coaster ride of our
lives, something no-one else could have done without actually possessing
super-powers. He steps out of the
spotlight (not off stage; please get something right, BBC) with a frighteningly
impressive successor in place and a truckload of reasons to be optimistic about
the future.

Best of all, he’s free of the restraints of office, with no
obligation to hold back any more, and there are several targets out there who
could really do with a barrage of withering scorn. Significantly, at the end of
Salmond’s calculatedly gracious Bonfire Night response to the burghers, or
however it’s spelt, of Lewes, he observed, “If they think I’m a threat to the
Westminster establishment like Guy Fawkes, they’re right.”

Monday, 10 November 2014

Thanks to Wee Ginger Dug for his permission to re-publish this post, which sums up where things stand with devo max better than I ever could!

So where’s my devo max then? Like most people in Scotland
who have been following political developments over the past few years – which
is most people in Scotland – I fancy I have quite a good idea of what the
phrase “devo max” means. It means that the Scottish Parliament raises all its own
revenue including oil revenues, and exercises all powers except those to do
with foreign affairs and defence – which would be retained by the UK
Parliament. Seems straightforward enough doesn’t it. There would be no
arguments about supposed “subsidies” from England, no disagreements over
Scottish MPs voting on English only matters. What’s not to like? And as the
icing on the devo cake, this is the settlement which, according to opinion
polls, is consistently favoured by a large majority of the Scottish population,
and had it been on offer prior to the independence referendum campaign, there
wouldn’t have been an independence referendum campaign.

I seem to recall that during a certain referendum campaign a
certain ex-prime minister promised us the most maxiest devo you could ever find
this side of a federal state. In fact, we were promised the most federalest
devo maxiest in the history of this most perfect union of nations ever seen in
the history of the multiverse. It was all over the BBC, which as we all know is
famous for its realistic depiction of all things Scottish – just watch Waterloo
Road for its realistic depiction of a school that follows the English
curriculum even though it’s in Greenock. Point proven.

Onieweys, this promise – or dare I say vow – came when yer
actual prime minister and the heads of the other Unionist parties were all
quite happy for the ex-prime minister to act like he was still prime minister,
although to be fair Gordie Broon’s relationship with his employment status has
always erred on the side of fictional. This is after all the man who described
himself as an ex-politician while he’s still the MP for Kirkcaldy and who can
rarely be arsed to turn up to represent them in the House of Commons.

What we were promised by Gordie and his tangential
relationship to reality was for Holyrood and the other devolved administrations
in the UK to have “the same status” as the Westminster Parliament. The new sort
of federal government, according to the ex-politician ex-prime minister, would
retain powers over defence and foreign affairs – everything else would be left
to the control of the national parliaments. Gordie’s promise was going to save
the UK, and that’s what Gordie’s promise did. Only Gordie’s promise was never
going to be realised and it has now gone much the same way as the Labour
party’s prospects of re-election in Scotland. There’s more chance of reviving a
velociraptor for Jurassic park than there is of resuscitating devo max – or the
Labour party.

Just a few days before the vote, Gordie vowed:

“The status quo is no longer an option. The choice is now
between irreversible separation, or voting for a stronger Scottish parliament.
We are talking about a big change in the constitution. It’s like home rule in
the UK. We would be moving quite close to something near to federalism in a
country where 85 per cent of the population is from one nation. Change is in
the air and change is coming.”

Two months after the event and it doesn’t look like the
Unionist parties are going to deliver anything close to that. Gordie himself
stood up in Westminster and laid into the Tories because they wanted to devolve
more taxes than he did. That’s the Tories, offering more devo than Labour – the
self-described “party of devolution”. And then Labour wonders why its polling
ratings have plunged further than a jobby that’s been flushed from a tenth
floor toilet.

Still, Unionist politicians don’t have to keep their words,
because Unionist politicians’ words mean whatever the Unionist politician wants
them to mean at any given moment. Gordie might be an ex-politician, but he’s
not an ex-fantasist. The devo max Gordie promised bears a similar relationship
to reality as his promise to end boom and bust. That’s devo max bust then. As
are the Unionist parties.

Devo max is not on offer after all, not even close. The
Unionist parties are proposing minor tinkering with the existing settlement,
arguing about what percentage of income tax revenues can dance on the head of a
Holyrood pin. It’s devo-get-what-you’re-given, devo-dae-as-yer-telt. It’s the
devolution that suits the political requirements of the Labour, Tory and Lib
Dem front benches.

Devo max will never be offered by the Unionist parties for
one very simple reason – it stands the relationship between Holyrood and
Westminster on its head. Under the current devolution settlement, powers
devolved are powers retained – and the ultimate power rests very firmly with
Westminster. It means that they can preserve the fiction that only the
Westminster Parliament is sovereign – and not the Scottish people. So
Westminster collects all the taxes, and decides how much Holyrood is going to
get. In the process it is conveniently able to obscure just how much of a
contribution Scotland and Scottish resources make towards the extremely
expensive upkeep of the United Kingdom and its addiction to nuclear missiles,
foreign wars, and transport infrastructure in the South East of England. Then
when Scotland gets uppity they can threaten us with warnings of financial
meltdown without the kindness of Davie Cameron and Ed Miliband to look out for
us.

With proper devo max, that couldn’t happen. Proper devo max
means that Westminster’s fiction of the sovereignty of parliament is rendered
meaningless and toothless. Holyrood would be responsible for raising all
Scottish revenues, so Westminster would no longer be able to cook the books and
tell us we were dependent upon them. And Holyrood would no longer be dependent
upon a block grant from Westminster, it would be the other way around –
Westminster would receive a grant from Holyrood to pay for those services which
remained under centralised UK control – defence and foreign affairs. In effect
this gives Holyrood a veto over Westminster’s foreign adventures – should there
be another Iraq, then the Scottish Parliament might just refuse to pay its
annual subvention to Westminster to pay for Scotland’s share of the costs of an
illegal war. That’s why the Westminster parties won’t allow devo max, no matter
how popular it is with the Scottish electorate, and no matter how often or
loudly we demand it of them.

So if you want something that is yours by right, but the
other party is not disposed to give it, then all that is left is to take it. We
can do that by ensuring that at the next Westminster General Election and the
next Scottish elections we return a majority of pro-Scotland MPs who can block
any attempts by Westminster to impose a devolution settlement which falls short
of the devo max they promised. It’s up to us to ensure they keep their
promises, and to punish them if they try – as they most assuredly will – to
weasel out of it.

Monday, 3 November 2014

Well, thanks a bunch, guys. Leaderless, rudderless and beset
by poll figures more terrifying than all the Halloween movies rolled into one, the Labour Party (North British
Branch) has finally drifted beyond the reach of satire. At least, that’s my
excuse for spending the past week periodically staring at a blank screen,
muttering “Bugger it” and flouncing off to watch Family Guy.

Comedians usually have a gift for timing, but even that
seems to have deserted Scotland’s natural party of merriment. Johann’s detonation
of the world’s largest-ever irony bomb, featuring the nation’s sarkiest anti-independence
campaigner girning about her work unit’s lack of independence, ensured that all
eyes were fixed on Labour at the very time they’d organised a £200-a-seat
knees-up in a city containing 34 food banks.

The Twittersphere was agog with the possibilities. Would Ed
Miliband unphotogenically choke on a dodgy prawn? Would Margaret Curran place
the poison capsules in the wrong wine glasses and wipe out half the Shadow
Cabinet? Would Johann’s blood-stained ghost appear, anxious for a “debate” with
her betrayers? Did Jim Murphy’s publicity-stunt grocery bag for the food bank
protestors contain eggs, and if so was he trying to provoke them?

As the world now knows, the headline-snatcher of the evening
was something no-one could ever have predicted. Anas Sarwar, whose reputation
for uninterrupted inane wittering had been surpassed only by the legendary Havering
Fruitbat of Madagascar, finally said something interesting. All right, it was only
his resignation as deputy leader, but it got him the only standing ovation he’s
ever likely to earn. As for his “soul searching”, did he really mean
“shoulder-blade searching”? Always a possibility when the political “family” you’re
constantly gabbing about turns out to be the Borgias.

But step away from the Kleenex, folks! We needn’t weep for
Anas, for there’s always a place in Labour’s Westminster hierarchy for a
privately-educated millionaire with a humungous inheritance in the pipeline.
And if that doesn’t work out, his inability to shut up makes him a shoo-in for
next year’s Mercury Music Prize, as part of the rap outfit “Young Fatheads”.

Observers of the bleedin’ obvious soon clocked that this was
a complete stitch-up, paving the way for Jim Murphy to call the shots from
Westminster, with a suitable poodle established as deputy in Edinburgh. In this
context, it may be significant that Kezia’s surname is an anagram of “dug
lead”. Of course, the rules will force Jim to shift to Holyrood by 2016, but that’s
bags of time to adjust the Barnett Formula to cover his expense claims.

It’s difficult to imagine Ed Miliband enthusiastically
endorsing anything, apart from possibly fratricide, but having Murphy in the
hot seat here would suit him nicely. For
one thing, it would give him one fewer explosive sociopath with a Messiah
complex to worry about at Westminster. And, with Jim drawing most of his policy
influences from the mean streets of Giffnock, there’d be no threat to the
people’s flag remaining consistently Blairite beige throughout the UK.

Predictably, the broadcasters appear totally awestruck that
a Westminster “heavy hitter” (hey, watch out for these elbows!) has deigned to
take an interest in us. “He’s the candidate the Nats fear most,” runs their
mantra, although the SNP’s biggest fear is of needing Paracetamol for their
aching sides. Interviews, conducted with
the ferocity of a Care Bears group hug, are painstakingly pitched to cultivate Jim’s
image as “the self-deprecating bloke who goes to football”. Your granny would adore him, as long as she
hadn’t attended one of his Irn Bru summits and asked an awkward question on Trident,
or the Middle East, or student fees, or never having had a bloody job in the real
world.

If you keep watching long enough, you’ll discover there are
two other leadership candidates, who are generally given as many seconds on screen
as a photo-fit on Crimewatch before we’re
whisked off to the next gargantuan slice of Murphy hagiography. Yes, I know I
myself haven’t mentioned them yet. Looks like bias is contagious, so after
I finish this blog I’d better make sure I go into quarantine, preferably where
there’s plenty of beer.

Sarah Boyack might, astoundingly, be a decent shout for the diminishing
number of people who care whether Labour can ever pull its shivered strands
together into a coherent political force. She’s reputed to have no enemies within the
party, even though that’s technically impossible. And, while carrying out the 2011
review of Labour in Scotland, she managed to work with Murphy without smashing
a chair over his head, indicating either Zen-like levels of calm or inability
to recognise a chair.

Her problem is that, even though she’s been in the Scottish Parliament
since 1707, half the media movers and shakers have never heard of her and the
other half think she’s that wumman who sang "I
Dreamed a Dream" on Britain’s Got
Talent. Still, she was once sacked by Jack McConnell, so that’s surely some
sort of accolade.

Neil Findlay is definitely the candidate most likely to wear
a T-shirt saying “This is what a socialist looks like”. His left-wing
credentials, plus an interview with Andrew Neil best summed up in the words “rabbit”
and “headlights”, got him soundly patronised on the BBC’s Daily Politics by irritating celebrity polymath Gyles Brandreth. However, at least it was a profile-boosting moment for Neil, since previously Gyles wouldn’t
have been able to spell his name even if you’d given him 11 Scrabble tiles in
the correct order.

Neil’s selling point is his “life experience”, which is (1)
a neat counterpoint to cocooned greasy pole climber Murphy, and (2) his way of deflecting
criticism that he’s only been an MSP for five minutes, albeit the same five
minutes as Ruth “Instant Stardom” Davidson. His varied career has encompassed being a bricklayer, a teacher,
a housing officer, a councillor and, in originally backing Gordon Brown for the
leadership, a spectacularly bad judge of character.

Of course, the contest isn’t as open to media jiggery-pokery
as certain other political events I could mention, because the choice will be made
by an electoral college, not a sofa-supine public brainwashed by Jackie Bird while
eating baked beans straight from the tin. The “Murphia” support team, festooned
with old Better Together super-villains such as Blair McDougall and blessed with the enthusiastic backing of ermine-bound Alistair Darling, may have more
of a challenge on their hands than they think. One shouldn’t intrude upon
private grief, but there could be mouth-watering schadenfreude opportunities in prospect.

As for satire, we bloggers may have to wait a little while
before we reclaim that. Hmmm, I wonder where I put my box set of the early seasons of
South Park?

About Me

I'm a writer who returned to Scotland in 2013 after 30+ years in the Home Counties. If you enjoy reading my ramblings, please return often and recommend me to your friends on Twitter, Facebook and Planet Earth. That way someone may one day give me money to do this sort of thing, which would be nice.
william_duguid@hotmail.com